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HE SENT FORTH A RAVEN by Elizabeth Madox Roberts Kirkus Star

HE SENT FORTH A RAVEN

By

Publisher: Viking

A novel in a new vein, striking a strange interpretative note, a commentary on society, which is illusive, intangible. The story is of Stoner Drako, driven within himself by the deaths of his two wives, and keeping throughout his remaining years, a vow not to set foot on God's earth again. But he defeats his own purpose, for he keeps a strangle held on all who work for him to take the riches and strength from the earth, and he stifles, too, all human impulses toward love and normal life in his daughter, whose lover he drives away, and -- for the time being -- he changes the stream of life in his granddaughter. But she it is who his touch with reality, and it is her story, too. We follow her from childhood, through her one escape into the world, in school, to her strange and very nearly abortive love affair with a conscientious objector (at the time of the World War), and its final culmination in marriage and a welding of the two families. Through the minor characters , the deeper meanings are found, though many will fool that the long -- and somewhat obscure -- dissertations of the various people about the farm, slow up the progress of the story. Elizabeth Roberts is a unique artist. She has a rhythm all her own, a melody of words that makes even what seems difficult to understand, an adventure to read. This is the publisher's big novel of the Spring, backed with advertising. Posters.